A local business is feeling some impacts due to the uncertainty surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Little Foot Foods in Oldcastle sells frozen ready-to-make pierogies and other ready-to-heat foods using family recipes.
Owner Rob Meyers told AM800's The Dan MacDonald Show that a portion of his business focuses on selling to tool and die workers around his shop located at 2010 Fasan Drive.
"We've seen those sales drop off for our lunches that we do, and on the flip side, it seems the buy Canadian initiative is forcing grocers to favour Canadian products more, and we've been getting calls from them and larger orders than usual, and even people looking for us to do things we don't normally do," Meyers said.
He says they have not yet been forced to raise prices in response to rising costs.
"Luckily for us we have always had a strong support local and buy Canadian mentally when it came to running our business, so we haven't had to change too much up," Meyers said. "I feel like everybody is being impacted by the rising costs in the same way, but for now we can weather that storm. We know like COVID, times are tough, and we don't want to pass that onto our customers until we absolutely have to."
Meyers says other cities in the country won't be as hard hit as Windsor-Essex will be.
"The bigger places, the little smaller places, we're all going to feel it because so much of our economy depends on the auto industry, and until we figure out different supply lines, and different ways to use our factories, it's going to be on and off until yo-yo of uncertainty stops," Meyers said.
Meyers says due to the frozen nature of their products, shipping is an issue, and the more local retailers they can help keep stocked up, the better it is for them.